David Harsanyi looks at the consistency (actually, the lack thereof) in President Obama’s proposals for negotiation on the Palestinian-Israeli peace process:
The United States does not negotiate with terrorists — but we insist Israel do without preconditions.
We will not get entangled in the distasteful internal politics of Iran — but we define Israel’s borders.
We will remove missile defense systems in Eastern Europe so we do not needlessly provoke our good friends in Russia — but we have no compunction nudging Israel to hand over territory with nothing in return.
This week, President Barack Obama spoke to the United Nations’ General Assembly and insisted that Israel and the Palestinians negotiate “without preconditions.” (Well, excluding the effective precondition that Israeli settlements are “illegitimate,” according to the administration — so no pre-conditions means feel free to rocket Israel while you talk.)
Israelis must be wondering just what possible benefit this set of negotiations can possibly offer them: they’re the ones who stand to lose if they fall in line with Obama’s preconditions, and the Palestinians have no reason to compromise. It’s funny that the only functioning democracy in the middle east is now being portrayed as the villain by the US government, while the pocket dictatorships surrounding Israel get a free pass.
There is an ethical question that the president might want to answer, as well. Why would the United States support an arrangement that scrubs the West Bank of all its Jews? Why is it so unconscionable to imagine that Jews could live among Muslims in the same way millions of Arabs live within Israel proper? Not many international agreements feature ethnic cleansing clauses.
Isn’t this, after all, about peace?
Of course, we all know the answer to this question: Jews would be slaughtered, bombed from their homes, rocketed from their schools. This indisputable fact reveals the fundamental reality of these negotiations.
